According to the latest news by Tasnim News Agency, Iran plans to send its first indigenous built remote sensing satellite “Tolou 1” into orbit by the first half next year. The construction of the satellite will be completed by the end of the current Iranian year.
As part of a comprehensive plan to develop its space program, Iran successfully launched into orbit its first indigenous data-processing satellite, Omid (Hope), back on February 2, 2009.
After that Iran also successfully launched its second satellite, dubbed Rassad (Observation), in June 2011 and third domestically-built Navid-e Elm-o Sanat (Harbinger of Science and Industry) satellite was sent into orbit in February 2012.
Rassad’s mission was to take images of the earth and transmit them along with telemetry information to ground stations.
Speaking in a conference in Tehran, Manouchehr Manteqi said a contract for conducting three projects on space studies has been signed by Defense Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehghan and Vice-President for Science and Technology Affairs Sorena Sattari on the sidelines of the cabinet meeting today.
“The third project features designing and producing the Islamic Republic of Iran’s first remote-sensing satellite, whose first generation is named Tolou 1 (Rise 1),” he said.
“The satellite has an imaging capability with an accuracy range of 25 square meters at a distance of 500 kilometers from the Earth,” Manteqi added.
